In recent days, I’ve talked to two Post-Intelligencer staffers. One of them (I won’t say who) confided in me that the staff consensus is that the paper’s doomed. The joint operating agreement with the SeaTimes can’t go on indefinitely, not if the Times is itching to get out; and few if any P-I staffers can imagine a second daily paper competing on its own.

I, however, can imagine this.

Of course, I don’t have access to the P-I’s or the Times’s financial data. I don’t know how much the P-I spends a year, or how much ad revenue it would take to pay for that and a newly independent P-I sales and distro staff—particularly in today’s business climate where free want-ad Web sites threaten to drain one of the newspaper biz’s revenue mainstays.

I would deeply love to see the coolest newspaper name in America preserved. But if the Hearst management in NYC chooses to retire the P-I name if and when the JOA ever ends, let’s start an all-new paper to replace it.

It’ll take a lot more than just me to do this. (Goodness knows my track record at starting business ventures is less than spectacular.)

I’ve fantasized about this previously here, but let’s get the fantasy going to a level of a little more detail. Let’s imagine a local daily print newspaper for the Internet age. What would it have and not have? What would it emphasize and de-emphasize? Would it have a cover price? Who would advertise in it? How would it tie in with a Web presence? Would the online edition carry more or less content than the print edition?

Lemme know what you think.

Let’s do it!